Our Footprint

The journey of transforming our vision into reality has only just begun. Much has been done, but there is still a lot to do. We are passionate about living lightly on the earth, but we certainly don’t have all the answers and we really look forward to investigating ideas and solutions with new participants and inhabitants.

This is where we are up to …

Village location: Located virtually in the centre of town, everything is in walking distance with schools, shops, post office etc. about 5 minutes on foot. There is a bus service to Hobart but, at the moment, we tend to car pool when heading to the big smoke.

Village Design: Smaller housing lots mean smaller houses and the clustering arrangement allows for easy sharing of resources; for example, pods may have a common facility with a single washing machine, shared tool shed and so on. Proximity of lots to one another means dwellings can easily be conjoined.

Building Design: We have drafted comprehensive Building Design guidelines (available on request) which are intended to give potential purchasers an outline of what will be advocated in terms of ecologically sustainable design. These are not exhaustive and may be changed by the Body Corprate as the village develops.

Infrastructure: We are harvesting rainwater for drinking and cooking; other water is supplied from the creek, bore and dams. Grey water recycling does not appear to be a viable option for this site, so we are using the town sewrage system for this. Composting toilets are permitted by council, and are encouraged by us. Stage one (pod A) has power supply from the grid (mainly hydro power in Tasmania) but we are encouraging the use of solar power and investigating wind and micro-hydro power options for the entire village.

Agriculture: No chemicals have been used on the food production areas of the site since it was purchased in 2007. We are committed to organic farming principles and are keen to know more about biological farming methods. Permaculture principles resonate with our vision and we are delighted that the Fat Beets Food Hub has established a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) system at the Village and is now growing and selling organic produce on site.

Environmental Management Strategy: We were fortunate to receive a grant through National Resource Management (NRM South) and commissioned a report into the natural resources at our Village. We are using this information to compile a comprehensive environmental management strategy plan for the Village, which will look at the preservation and restoration of native plants and animals on the property and the management of introduced species.